Farabi Fakih and Fathun Karib: Indonesian Ecological Thinking

As Indonesia grapples with increasingly frequent climate disasters—from the devastating floods in Sumatra and Aceh to prolonged droughts affecting food security—a new book is rejecting the usual solutions. No carbon credits. No waiting for the next Elon Musk. Instead, Bacaan Bumi asks: what if the answers lie in Indonesia's own revolutionary history, its constitutional foundations, and its diverse philosophical traditions? Published by Yayasan Obor Pustaka Indonesia last year, Bacaan Bumi began as a monthly supplement for Inside Indonesia magazine—where, we should acknowledge, several Talking Indonesia hosts are also involved. (Yes, this is a slightly nepotistic episode, but we promise the ideas are worth it.) The supplement was initiated by Gerry van Klinken, a longtime Indonesia scholar and one of the board members of Inside Indonesia, and brought together 17 Indonesian academics, activists, and thinkers who argue that technology and market mechanisms alone won't save us. Instead, they propose something more radical: an eco-socialist manifesto rooted in Indonesian soil. The book emerged from conversations sparked by a groundbreaking summer school on critical environmental history at Gadjah Mada University—Indonesia's first university program of its kind. The response has been striking: packed book launches across Java, students demanding more courses, and activists finding new language to connect Marxist commodity analysis with Javanese mysticism, Islamic green theology with feminist readings of adat traditions, and Sukarno's Marhaenism with 21st-century ecological citizenship. The editors don't call it an academic collection. They call it a manifesto. In his introduction, Farabi Fakih writes that Indonesia's environmental movement in the 21st century is “the natural continuation of the Southern revolution imagined by Sukarno.” He explicitly rejects what he calls the “techno-magical narrative” of Silicon Valley billionaires and the “declensionist narrative” of inevitable doom—both of which, he argues, serve to disable collective action against capitalism. But what does an environmental manifesto look like in the Indonesian context? How do you connect Marx's theory of metabolic rift to flood disasters in Sumatra? Why do young Indonesians find hope in pan-psychism and Kendeng mountain feminism? And what happens when you discover that Indonesia's 1945 constitution already contains ecological philosophy that's been largely forgotten? In this episode, we had a conversation with two of Bacaan Bumi's key contributors: Farabi Fakih, who heads the Master's program in History at Gadjah Mada University where the critical environmental history curriculum was born, and Fathun Karib, a historical sociologist, postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, and founding member of punk band Critical Death. Together they explore why genuine solutions must come from within Indonesia, why book tours revealed both hope and anxiety among younger generations, and how a 1960s Indonesian constitutional provision about the earth might offer more wisdom than all of Silicon Valley's promises combined. In 2026, the Talking Indonesia podcast is co-hosted by Dr Jemma Purdey from the Australia-Indonesia Centre, Dr Elisabeth Kramer from the University of New South Wales, Tito Ambyo from RMIT, Dr Jacqui Baker from Murdoch University, and Clara Siagian from University College London.